"It was my decision."
"It was the wrong decision."
"It was the only one I was ever going to make." His hand slid into her hair. The white strands caught on his fingers, tangling, and the sensation of it pulled a sound from his chest that was quiet and wrecked and reverent. "I would choose it again. In every life. In every body. In every version of this conversation you wish to have with me, the answer remains unchanged."
"You are infuriating."
"I have been told. Often. Primarily by you."
A sound left her that she didn't recognize. Something between a laugh and a sob, wet and ugly and human, a noise that belonged to a woman whose grief and her love for this man occupied the same room and kept crashing into each other.
"Natalia." His hand cupped her jaw. Tilted her face up. Gold eyes met green, and the gold was so bright it turned the shadows on the ceiling into daylight. "Hear me. There was never anything to forgive."
